


By The Edge of Your Blade

by fourfreedoms (orphan_account)



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Espionage, Kushiel's Legacy - Freeform, M/M, Prostitution, inexplicit references to past rape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-07
Updated: 2012-08-22
Packaged: 2017-11-03 05:31:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/377830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/fourfreedoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles is the great shame of the house of courtesans he was born into. Unable to write poetry or compose music or make grand works of art, he is deemed a complete failure. Resigned his entire life to being relegated to a dusty corner, a shadowy figure purchases him and gives him a purpose and a prickly bodyguard with more than a slight objection to Charles' chosen profession.</p><p>Involving sword fights, unabashed mind reading, characters from the entire Marvel universe, and a metric ton of porn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a lot of people's fault. I begged for people to stop me (proof positive: [here](http://fourfreedoms.livejournal.com/316223.html#cutid1)), and yet I find myself 15,000 words in the hole and still going. A lot of people helped me brainstorm this whole universe out, most prominently memphis86 and regala_electra, who aren't even in this fandom, but who thought Nick Fury would make the bestest Delaunay ever. And to rosekay, who listened, bleary eyed and hungover at brunch, and was somehow amused rather than appalled. 
> 
> So er, yeah. Thanks!

They have a guest, one the Dowayne is desperate to impress, if the commotion and the fear of disappointment that lingers all over the house is anything to go by. Patrons have been cleared out on short notice, some being extracted from their beds nearly mid-coitus, and others firmly told to turn around at the door. Charles is to be kept out of the way, he can sense that thought in more than one head. 

He sighs, but even as he feels bitter disappointment he knows that it’s his perfect chance to escape to Night’s Doorstep. They don’t come often enough to pass up and if he’s supposed to be out of sight, nobody will know he’s gone. He calculates that it’ll be at least three hours before they gather themselves together to send the house guards after him. Nevertheless, he dithers for a moment, because the whispers and shadows in people’s minds of this mystery visitor intrigue him. 

But he also knows he’ll be in for a thrashing if he’s caught underfoot, and worse, his mother’s unsurprised displeasure. Charles has managed to fit an entire lifetime of disappointing her into his few years. It is hardly deterrent enough when she’ll also find it in herself to be histrionically mortified when he is caught off the grounds. Again. 

What he should do is return to the nursery and wait until all the excitement has died down. His curiousity has assuredly never been rewarded before.

An adept approaches unexpectedly two corridors away. Her mind accidentally reveals that she was given the sole task of ensuring Charles didn’t create some ruckus. This, more than anything, decides him. He makes for the kitchen, with its unimpressive side door that often goes unused and rarely watched. He has to duck behind an urn to avoid the Dowayne’s second, Matthieu, a fearsome large man fancied to be the best silversmith in Terre D’Ange. His skill with silver is only surpassed by his ability to insult Charles’ in the most imaginative ways. For somebody who prizes propriety as much as he does, it’s a surprise to find him dashing down the hall at a run. It occurs to him that someone from the royal family must be coming--surely no one else would merit this level of upheaval. House Eglantine has been visited a few times in his life by a minor royal cousin or two, but it’s never created such turbulence. But he’s already decided he isn’t going to investigate. At least he knows, with his few stolen hours, he’ll have fun with Raven in Night’s Doorstep. 

He nearly stumbles into a cloaked man already waiting at the door with his back turned. This is not altogether unusual, many who come to the Night Court prefer to do so under the cover of anonymity. But still curious, because this can only be the guest that the Dowayne and her second are currently eagerly waiting for in the receiving hall. 

Charles pauses, sticking close to the wall. The man takes off his hood, revealing dark skin and one eye covered with a rakish eye patch.

_“What ridiculousness. That the academy could appoint a man who yet believes the earth is flat? That this remains a prevailing view in the minds of the public. ‘Surely, Fury, if it were round, we would be conscious of being turned sideways! I know what my eyes see.’ If it were flat would we not see clear to the Orient? And yet, the Himalayas do not appear before my sight! Should pay people to heckle him at his next oration with that Archimedes text. But which one is it?”_

The thought is so clear and decisive, as if the man was grouching aloud, Charles doesn’t realize it’s a thought until he’s already trapped himself.

“You won’t find it in Archimedes’s work, sir. It was the Hellene, Eratosthenes. who first proved the earth was round--” the man snaps around quickly, eyes alighting on Charles with such an intensity that the words die on his tongue, “--as the distance the naked eye can see follows directly the curvature of the earth...”

He knows from the assessing look on the man’s face that he has revealed everything he has tried so desperately to hide. It is the first time since he discovered thoughts in his head that were not his own that he has ever slipped up.

He backs up against the wall, wondering what action the man will take. His expression gives away nothing and his thoughts, so easily organized and formed that they sounded like casual mutterings, are now shuttered away. 

“Nicholas! The side door, really? You are always playing such games!” the Dowayne interrupts, sweeping imperiously into the small corridor, Matthieu only a few steps behind. “Oh, Charles!” she says, startled, before hiding it instantly with a smooth mask of disinterest. Behind that cardsharp’s face is a seething mass of outrage. Charles attempts to make himself smaller fall sadly short of the mark. 

“The lad is quite intriguing,” this Nicholas speaks, a slight smile curling about his lips. Charles’s eyes dart over to him, wondering feverishly what he means to do. 

“To be sure he has very lovely blue eyes and is quite an acrobat, but he has absolutely no aptitude for anything constructive. Always mucking about in the dirt, hiding in the library, or running off to Night’s Doorstep.” She’s babbling. Charles has never felt her so discomfited. “We will likely have to sell his marque to Cereus or Orchis. Certainly Dahlia won’t take him.” She pauses for breath, and for the first time in his life he feels something like compassion in her, but it is quickly stifled. “Shame really, his mother is Sharon nó Eglantine.” 

Charles drops his eyes, cheeks burning. His failures, compounded with the name of the greatest playwright in the realm, seem that much more stark. He can feel Matthieu’s chilly disgust and the Dowayne’s stinging anger, and from this stranger who knows his secret, absolutely nothing. 

“How much?” Nick says. 

Everything grinds to a halt. 

“Pardon?” the Dowayne says, blinking in surprise. 

“How much for his marque?” 

Charles stares at him, open-mouthed. Nobody has ever wanted him, ever. Except Raven, and that is not the same.

Matthieu growls, “You can’t be serious? Come now, Fury, none of your jesting.” 

The Dowayne holds up her hand, assessing Nicholas with new eyes. He can hear her realization that something about Charles has caught Nicholas’s eye, and if Nicholas, of all people, is interested in a boy like Charles there must be some worth to him. The price she names is so steep it makes Charles’ stomach drop out. 

He expects Nicholas to point out that she just called Charles entirely worthless, but Fury’s smile widens and he says, “Done.” 

The Dowayne nods and holds out her hand, flinty gaze sweeping over Charles. She has internally concluded that she made a deal worthy of any adept of Briony, and if she is suddenly cheery as she shakes Nicholas’s hand, her face never shows it. “Shall we attend to other business?” she asks and Nicholas nods. They leave Charles behind, disappearing into the recesses of the house. 

Charles hears suddenly and very clearly: _”I would’ve paid much more for you.”_ It scares him, and he is not sure if he can trust the surge of terrible kindness beyond the words. What use could Nicholas have for him? He knows--like he has known his entire life that he will serve at other people’s pleasure--that nobody will allow the man to take him before he is deemed ready. He knows the word for it--rape--but that is something that happens in other places, for here in Terre D’Ange rape is a crime beyond treason. But he is still frightened--he has never heard of a servant of Naamah being bought by a private citizen.


	2. An Interminable Wait

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles leaves House Eglantine for the last time to become the ward of Nick Fury.

He does not see hide nor hair of Nicholas Fury for two years after that. The whole transaction could’ve been dream, but for the sumptuous presents Fury sends every year on his name day. The first was an edition of Archimedes’s canon bound in butter-soft leather, and Charles knew Fury must’ve been teasing him. But it’s the first book Charles could ever call his own. The second was a little less practical--a jeweled collar that the house servants festooned on him when he served as a _Joie_ bearer at the midwinter masque.

Charles has tried to seek Fury’s mind out, as he sometimes does out of masochistic curiosity for his mother, but though he knows Fury is well within his range, he feels nothing.

“I don’t know why you’re so fascinated by him,” Raven says, nicking him an apricot from a fruit stall. 

“I can’t explain it to you if you don’t know,” Charles replies, face burning. His immediate impulse is to put the apricot back, but Raven is already tugging him along. He tucks it hurriedly into his pocket. “His mind isn’t like any I’ve ever felt. Armored somehow.” 

Raven looks at him, brows lowered. “Are you sure you should trust him?” 

Charles looks down at his feet. “As sure as I was that I could trust you.” He glances over at her, an unremarkable blonde girl, beautiful in the way that all D’angeline children are beautiful. But it is not truth, for she is just like him in the way that they are not like anyone else. Beneath that apple-cheeked face is blue skin and the gold eyes of her Tsingani forebears. She looks nothing at all like a Tsingano in this form she prefers, but since she looks nothing like a Tsingano in life, Charles supposes that is right.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have trusted me either,” she says softly. 

He doesn’t say you’re my dearest and only friend, because her fierce and unsentimental heart will only laugh it off. So he says, “But I did.”

For two years the people of House Eglantine have wondered what it is Fury could want with an adept of Naamah for his very own. Charles has wondered the same thing. What he has gleaned from the minds around him don’t give him any answers. Charles is going to be ten in two weeks and then he will be sent to live with Fury.

In two weeks he supposes he will know. And for all his bravado before Raven, he is scared. 

*

When Fury’s carriage is sent to fetch him he reads his servant’s gratitude and loyalty to their master, but mostly they think of simple things--polishing their shoes, supper, the cheapest place to cadge wine. 

His mother did not come to say goodbye. She sent a letter from her salon, written in the obvious unfurnished hand of her secretary. The wild rose scented missive claimed that she was proud of him. Charles doesn’t even have to read her to know it’s a lie. 

But the day was not without its gifts either. Charles could only passably play a lute, and not even eke out that much for a pretty poetic verse, and had ever been called the bane of everyone’s existence. But for some reason he was summoned to the Dowayne’s chambers for an unexpected farewell. The Dowayne looked at him with some fondness before she handed him a spray of eglantine roses.

“You know Charles, in case you ever doubt, even if you did not fit here, your mischief would have made you a lovely adept of Orchis.”

She meant it with a kindness, but Charles had only ever wanted to be part of the beautiful creative machine of Eglantine, of smiths and wrights and artists. But some types of genius are more prized than others, and his love of the library and the way things worked and how white flowers crossbred with pink flowers still turned out pink were not a part of it. He is thankful at least that Fury wants him, rather than to be fobbed off onto Orchis’s hands to see if they could make anything of him. 

Before long they’re pulling up at a townhouse not far from the palace and Charles is bored. These minds have yielded nothing of interest. 

Fury waits on the steps with another girl of an age with Charles. She has pretty limpid grey eyes and a down-turned rosebud mouth. All Charles gets from her are uncomplicated good thoughts. She is so sweet, after his life spent in a brothel surrounded constantly by salacious fancies, Charles feels a sudden urge to retch. 

The girl smiles at him and kisses him on the cheek. No touch in the Court of the Nightblooming Flowers is wasted and Charles who feels very keenly that this is a wasted touch has to prevent himself from flinching. 

“So, Charles, what did you observe?” Fury asks. 

“What?” Charles’s instinct is to read him to find out his meaning, but he runs up against that same mental barrier he encountered years ago. 

Fury smiles like he knows what Charles attempted to do. “About your ride here,” he prompts. 

“Ah,” Charles pauses wondering if he should even bother to hide the extent of his abilities or if letting them be known can serve as some kind of defense. He gets nothing of any kind from Fury or good sweet Moira, who is thinking that she has never seen eyes as blue as his before. He sighs, coming to a decision. “The carriage is not your own, nor the horses. Your driver was unfamiliar with them. However, the people were all yours, suggesting that you must have a carriage. And why send a carriage that is not your own if you have a carriage? I can only assume you wanted nobody to know that you were taking me from Eglantine.”

Fury looks surprised, but still he asks. “And?”

“And?” Charles repeats, taken aback. 

_The footmen were all trained how to fight. The footmen were all trained how to fight. The footmen were all trained how to fight._ He hears Moira thinking over and over at him. She doesn’t know his ability, she just wants him to say the right thing. It serves the same purpose. With her knowledge he sees it now. The scars on their hands, their stances, the hint of a weapon beneath a doublet. 

Charles blushes. He would never have noticed. “I know the answer you want, but I did not arrive at it by myself,” he says honestly, eyes darting over to Moira, suspecting Fury would know if he tried to play it off as his own idea. Is Fury like him? 

“Hmm,” Fury says, tone inscrutable. “How many people can you read?” 

“Everyone,” Charles drops his eyes, “except you.”

“I was taught to reign in my thoughts, but I suspect you could read me if you wanted.” 

Charles shakes his head. “It’s like running into a wall.” 

“Have you tried to break through the wall?” Fury asks, face unreadable. 

“It would hurt you,” Charles says, and he knows this without a doubt. He feels defensive, so used to people pointing out his many and varied shortcomings. 

“Charles, all of this, I fear, will hurt,” he smiles grimly and turns away. “What do you know of me?” 

Charles thinks carefully about what to say. “I know that you were once a high ranked general in the princes’ armies, and you had the ear of John Grey. You disseminated information on the Princess Consort that was...inconvenient. She called for your death, but to save you, Grey stripped you of your post and forbid you to bear weapons. The prince is dead, so is his princess, and still you cannot bear steel.”

Moira starts like this is news to her and the feedback Charles gets from her proves that it is. He looks at her and then back at Nick Fury in askance. “But this is what everybody of an age with you knows. I do not know what you want with me.” 

“So, the reach of the Night Court ends there,” he says softly. “You do not know what I want with you, because you do not know what I am.” 

Charles is tired of word games and he brings his fingertips to his forehead and finds the answer in Moira. “You are the King’s spymaster. You mean to train and use me as a spy. But I do not understand, I thought I was to be sworn as a servant of Naamah.” 

Nick smiles like Charles has at last pleased him and Moira’s eyes widen, she taps her own forehead like she should be able to feel him there. “You will have to learn not to bring your fingertips to your forehead. Otherwise you risk loudly telegraphing your intentions to the entire world. But you are correct on both counts. As an adept you and Moira will be able to get closer to the citizens of this great nation than anybody else. With your ability there will be nothing they can keep safe from you. But,” he pauses, voice turning grave, “you may say no, the choice, ultimately, lies with you.” 

*

Charles does not say no. 

He spends the next three years learning languages--Caerdicci, Cruithne, Skaldic, and Habiru, until he thinks his head will burst. 

“I don’t understand why I have to know all of this,” he says, watching Moira happily babble away in Hellene. “People don’t really think in something so formal or concrete as language.” 

Fury flicks his ear. “You will not always be able to rely on reading people’s minds, Charles.”

And testing his abilities. Charles learns to break through Fury’s mental defenses, to carry separate conversations out loud and in other’s heads. 

“This will be useful if you ever need help from Coulson,” Fury says, gesturing to their silent bodyguard. Coulson nods and disappears behind a pillar. 

Fury has him practicing influencing people’s decisions, whispering little suggestions and commands. It’s not always easy, at first he can only give people mild compulsions to do things, a little like getting a melody stuck in their head, but slowly he gets the hang of it. One day pushing at cook to make the biscuits he loves so much he finds himself inhabiting her eyes, walking her towards the larder and the stores of flour. He is so surprised he falls down the stairs. 

“Charles, what in the seven hells?” Fury asks, running out of his study at Cook’s scream of distress to find Charles slumped at the bottom of the steps. 

“I--I took control of-of Cook,” he says weakly, “I didn’t mean to.” 

Fury turns to look over his shoulder where Cook is screaming about demons and being comforted by anxious parlour maids. 

“She did not like the sensation, I take it,” Fury says dryly. 

Charles shakes his head, full of guilt. 

Fury helps him up. “Very well, Charles, you will have to make her forget.” 

Charles freezes. He’s peered inside and had things come to him unbidden, tried to give ideas and make people see things different than they actually were, but he’s never explicitly tampered with anything he found inside a mind. 

“Are you sure?” he whispers. 

Fury’s face is hard and when Charles tries to read him he thrusts him out with a firm push. “Yes.” 

That is the day Charles realizes the terrible strength of his power. 

Sometimes he finds Fury watching him like he is not sure what monster he is creating, but Charles never senses anything in his thoughts that give him away. 

After reducing those precious three seconds of cook’s time to a blurry blank he escapes the house and goes to Night’s Doorstep to see Raven. She steals him hot pastries and morphs into various people who live in the neighborhood to make him feel better. “Are we the only ones like this?” he asks her. 

“Someone must have taught Fury how to prevent you from seeing his thoughts,” she points out, running her fingers through his hair. 

“Yes,” he says. 

*

When Charles turns thirteen, Fury hires an instructor for an entirely new kind of education. Angel Salvadore is one of the most celebrated courtesans of the realm. After making her marque in a record two years, she married and settled down on a small country estate, starting a modest and informal salon of her own. In a way that should no longer surprise, Fury has enough clout to get her to agree to set aside her own pursuits to teach them what they need to know in order to become true servants of Naamah. 

Moira does not like the lessons at all, Charles is not surprised, but he was born for this, it’s in his blood, and something inside him stretches like wings unfurling. 

“Ah, Charles, Fury tells me you were bound for Orchis before he purchased your marque, but I do believe you would have done Cereus just as proud,” Angel tells him after asking him to read a select passage in the _Trois Milles Joies_. It is unexpected praise. Cereus is the first and the greatest of the houses. 

Charles ducks his head to conceal a blush. He knows he will be able to make patrons see and perceive him as whatever their hearts may wish, but that will come with a three day pounding headache, and there is something in actually being that desire and not a simulacrum of it. Moira squeezes his hand. “You are beautiful, Charles,” she whispers. 

She is so good, so absent of petty thought, that it nearly burns. 

*

By the time Charles is sixteen, he is nearly ready to fly out of his skin from eagerness for his first assignation, but Fury waits...for something, Charles cannot figure out what. Even Moira, who is filled with a needling anxiety over it, begins to chafe at the restriction. Charles feels useless and angry and he spends a lot of time running away to Night’s Doorstep and being dragged back by Coulson. 

“I’m not sure why you’re so obsessed, it’s just sex,” Raven says over a tankard of ale. 

Charles snorts. “I have spent the last three years learning everything there is to know about it and repeatedly watching others have it and spending time around people who think of nothing, _nothing_ besides it. How can I be anything but obsessed?” 

“Sounds unhealthy,” she says with a laugh. “You might burst!” 

“Ha-bloody-ha,” he says and lays his head upon the table. 

She buys him another drink. She’s become quite flush recently. Charles suspects she is behind the recent string of break-ins in the merchant quarter, but he can’t tell, because he promised long ago never to read her mind. 

“Hello, lovely,” a pretty dark-haired girl Charles has seen at this pub before says. She creeps fingers up his shoulder and with the touch he knows she means to take him to the livery next door and tumble him down in the hay. For one moment he honestly considers it, but Raven crashes into the girl, spilling ale all over her. She shrieks and the moment is lost. 

Charles smiles and excuses himself. 

When he gets back that evening Fury summons him into the study. He does not look pleased. “Coulson told me you had an interesting opportunity tonight.” 

Charles blushes. “How does he do that?” he mutters. He hadn’t even sensed Coulson’s presence. 

Fury snorts. “He was a Cassiline brother until he was fifteen.” 

“Coulson?” Charles says, blinking at him. He has never had the slightest whiff of it from Coulson’s thoughts. “But he doesn’t...”

“He broke his vow of celibacy and was cast out. It was his greatest shame. I doubt he would linger on it overmuch.” 

Charles mulls over that. “Am I in trouble?” 

“Why? For running out to Night’s Doorstep? You’ve been doing that since you were six years old.” 

Charles does not drop his eyes, although he wants to. “No, for the other thing.” 

Fury sits down behind his great oaken desk and sighs. “I have decided it is time for Moira’s debut, and in turn, your own.” 

Charles breathes and it feels like the first breath he’s had in a long time. He wants to sink to the floor and thank the gods. 

“You must forgive me, Charles, I was--I was raised with a different conception on when a person is ready than you were.” It is the first time that Charles has ever heard him sound uncertain. Charles finds himself crossing the room and pressing a kiss to Fury’s forehead. 

“Oh stop,” Fury says, thrusting him away. Charles smiles and mockingly dusts himself off. 

“Do not linger on it overmuch,” Charles replies, repeating Fury’s own words back to him. “You have been good to me.” 

* 

Moira’s debut is the first party Charles has attended where he isn’t just a part of the scenery. He is given champagne and while it makes the edges of his control go a bit fuzzy, he finds he likes it. 

A tall blonde woman with a placid face and striking features walks over to him. She looks him over with clear interest. Charles blushes and she laughs. “So, now I see why I’m no longer invited over to Fury’s house.” She holds out her hand for him to kiss. “Emma Frost.” 

Charles bends over it when her voice blossoms in his mind. _You are quite a prize indeed._

Charles starts and drops her hand, she laughs and chucks him under the chin. This has be the person that taught Fury to armor his thoughts. _So then, how was it you came to be hiding in Eglantine house of all places?_

Charles has a sudden instinct to hide the depth and breadth of his abilities. Something about her cold, cut glass mental presence, so at odds with the brilliant smile upon her face makes his heart race. 

_My mother is Sharon no Eglantine._ He says it as calmly as he can muster, pretending he doesn’t understand her question. Not that it would matter. He doesn’t know how he came to be born with such abilities. Why should it matter?

Moira walks into the room at that moment, even if Charles couldn’t see her through everybody else’s eyes, the sudden hush in the room would tell him. She’s outfitted like a Hellenic goddess of old, a muse, Terpsichore, Charles thinks. He has never seen her so confident or striking, but when he reaches out to her he felt nervous energy pouring off her in waves. Her eyes rove over the assembled company in a way that seems assessing, but Charles knows it's a frightened casing of the room. He sighs internally, sensing Emma's cruel amusement.

Fury had invited nobody to Moira's debut that would shame her. Charles flies through all their minds, and sees only compassion and awe returned in the face of Moira's kind grey gaze. He smiles when he comes to the mind who will win the night. An apple-cheeked man from L'agnace, who had the funds and the desire to lie with one such as Moira.

 _Calm yourself_. Charles tells her, sending signals from her brain to her heart to slow its beat. Moira blushes and shivers, like the effect is pleasurable. Everyone else sees a young woman modest in the face of all the attention.

 _I didn't know you could do that._ She thinks, radiating gratitude.

"She is exquisite," Emma says. "Her virgin price will be quite high."

A few others around them murmur assent.

But then Emma's voice is echoing again in his head: _But you and I both know you are the real pearl._

His eyes slide to her, lips parting. She means to bid on him for his virgin price, not because she wants to lie with him, but because of what lies in his skull. It repulses him and it takes everything he has not to back away from her. Charles must keep a tight lid on his own emotions, for there is nobody else in the room who can soothe him as he did Moira. Yet he wonders if she knows, and the thought only amuses her more.

*

Moira returns to Fury's house with a soothed spirit. The man from L'Agnace, the son of the Comte De Sommerville, had done well by her. Unfortunately she broadcasts her pleasure and memories all over the house, and Charles cannot do enough to escape it.

Fury finally finds him in the library, hidden under one of the tables, a seat cushion pressed to his head. Charles is shaking and hard, unable to seek release before he has given the gift of his virginity. And while he has been around people who've had these thoughts before, in the same house even, they were not minds he was as attuned to as Moira's.

"This is ridiculous, Charles!" Fury says, peering below the table with a grim face. When Charles groans pitiably and hides his face in his shoulder, something in him relents, and he crouches down beside him, allowing Charles to lay head in his lap. It is more tenderness than the gruff Fury has ever shown him or likely will again. Charles suspects Fury keeps a quota of such moments so that he does not overfill it. 

Charles shivers and mumbles as Moira thinks again of the moment of her climax while she bathes.

"Why don't you simply tell her?" Fury says, strong fingers unexpectedly gentle as they card through Charles's hair, much like Raven does.

"I don't want to take it from her," he says, gritting his teeth. The fact that she was so frightened goes unspoken between them.

Fury brushes a hand down Charles's front with a regretful sigh. "You know, I might have bid on you myself." Charles stares up at him with cloudy uncomprehending eyes. Fury smiles that rakish grin. "But you were not meant for one such as me."

"What do you mean?"

"I have loved once, greatly. It is not within me to accept anything less just for the novelty."

Moira's thoughts stop assaulting him and Charles sighs, hand clutching reflexively at Fury's crossed thighs. "Is that why you do this? For your lost love?"

"Yes."

Fury's eyes cast over the room unseeing and Charles shudders, safe at last in his own thoughts. "Do not let Lady Emma Frost pay my virgin price," he says, surprising himself.

Fury looks down at him, inscrutable.

Charles shudders again. "I know I will have to go to her, one day. She may have taught you your shields, but you cannot trust her. I know you cannot not trust her."

"Charles…"

"She knows as much," Charles replies, breath steadying. "Do not give her the first time."

Fury laughs. "She may bid, Charles, probably just to rile me, but she will not have the funds for you, I think. Unless she means to outbid the blood of the realm."

"What?" Charles says, pulling himself partially up.

"It has been…made known to me," Fury stops with a weighty pause and Charles remembers that even though he and Moira have not yet been able to glean anything, that Fury still has spies in other places. "That Malkin Grey means to purchase your virgin price for his granddaughter."

" _What?_ " Charles chokes out, reinforcing it with his mind. Fury rubs at his temples and shoots Charles a withering glance.

"Don’t jest," Charles says. "To have a virgin bed the heir of all of Terre D'ange? And me?"

"I think that was his reasoning. The Dauphine is a virgin as well."

"But me!" Charles repeats, knowing he sounds quite stupid at this point.

"Charles, you undervalue yourself. I do not make poor investments."

Charles snorts, thinking of his mother who he has not seen now in six years and who has made no attempt to rectify that either.

Fury shakes his head at him in fond exasperation. In one of Fury's rare moments of unguardedness, he feels Fury wondering how many times they will have to have this conversation. "Do you know aught of your father?"

"No," Charles says, biting the syllable off. He has never looked in his mother's mind. Although it is said no child can be born in Terre D'ange unbidden, Charles has always had the sense he was the lone unexpected birth. He hadn't wanted to look to find out.

"He was Brian Xavier de Perigeux," Fury says, naming the liege lord of Siovale. Charles nearly laughs, but for the serious look in Fury’s eyes. That he is an unwanted bastard of a lord is not unbelievable, many in the Night Court were. That he is the son of the lord of all Siovale is ridiculous. 

"Even if Sharon could not see your obvious worth, it does not mean he wouldn’t have," Fury says. "You are very like him." Charles stares at him incredulously and Fury brusquely shoves at his head. "Word has spread about you, Charles, or rather, I have spread it. When the Dauphine heard of how you were often found blowing up things in the kitchens or hiding pets in the nursery to study, she asked for you."

Charles rolled his eyes and rolled off Fury to hide his face in the couch cushion. "That will never leave me behind, will it?"

Fury chuckles and swats at his behind with a little more force than necessary. "Nope, I'm afraid never. Now, you appear much improved. Get up, you must stop hiding in the library."

Charles groans. "Moira has finally fallen asleep, thank all the gods."

"It will not be long now," Fury says with a pointed look and gets to his feet. He disappears to attend to whatever it is he does behind closed doors and a closed mind that Charles cannot see.

*

Even though Charles knows the outcome of his Debut, he finds himself awfully nervous. He feels quite bad for the way he dismissed Moira's nerves and then he reasons with himself that he would not be so damned jittery if he wasn't about to be purchased as the future monarch of the realm's first lover.

Fury also didn't bother to outfit him anything near so elaborate as Moira's diaphanous hellenic robes. He had the maidservants dress Charles in low slung black riding breaches and boots, and absolutely nothing else. Charles had felt woefully under-attired much to Fury’s amusement.

"Please, Charles," he said, "It wouldn't do to make them think you've already been bought and paid for. Best to give them a taste. Set the sharks swimming."

"I have never been near a horse in my life," Charles had replied, put out, to the maidservants titters.

"No matter, young master," one of them said, a hand hovering just short of his shoulder. Charles can read lust all over the room and it startles him. Fury's raised brows tell him he knows exactly what Charles is thinking. She completes the sentence, "Nobody will notice."

Neither Jean, the Dauphine, nor her grandfather, the king, are in attendance, and as the bidding starts Charles begins to think that Fury was mistaken. Emma is of course easily spotted in all her pale blonde glory, and other high ranked nobles that Charles only knows by description through Fury's teachings are milling about. He is surprised by how many former adepts--men and women who have made their marques and are now free to be with whomever they please--have come.

The bidding goes quite high and then a man in the blue and silver of House Grey steps forward, and announces a steep price. Everybody around stops in silence.

Moira's voice resounds in his head, thinking loudly and always with the hope that Charles will hear her. _He has waited so long to bid out of respect for you,_ she says with a mental laugh, _he must know that nobody would dare bid against the blood._

Charles looks at the proxy for House Grey and accepts it as true. The man inclines his head with a small smile, like he and Charles are sharing in some joke. Charles can't help an embarrassed smile in return.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Malkin Grey is probably more than a few generations before Jean Grey's grandfather, but since her actual paternal grandfather is unknown, I figured it was easier to assign it to him. Also the man's name is a play on Grimalkin. How is that not hilarious?  
> *I may have creeped myself out with that whole Nick Fury bidding on Charles thing. Ugh, I apologize.


	3. Start as you mean to continue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles finally has his first assignation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: there is sex with somebody that is not Erik!

The details are figured out behind closed doors that Charles is not allowed past. Contracts are signed with much back and forth, Charles can tell from the boredom radiating from the royal proxy’s mind. After the proxy has left, Fury waits until Charles is nearly sick with anticipation to reveal the assignation is to be held in a week’s time. 

The very next day he is roused from his bed at some ungodly hour and forced to the tailors.

“I don’t understand why this is necessary,” Charles complains, mumbling around a decadent pastry to Angel who’s accompanying him. He’s still bleary-eyed and barely keeping his head up as the carriage trundles along. 

“You’ll be escorting the Dauphine to a court function, we can’t have you showing up in your velvets all stained with chemical burns.”

“But that would be okay for some other poor jacknob?” Charles asks acidly. 

She ignores him and steals away his pastry, chucking it from the carriage. When Charles protests, she grins and says, “Can’t have you getting pudgy.” 

He huffs and yawns hugely, not caring how rude it is. He doesn't know why everybody is making such a big production out of it, or rather he does, because he can read their minds, and he finds himself vaguely appalled. Nobody else's virginity came with as much scrutiny as Jean's apparently.

He tries not to be uncomfortable when the carriage pulls up in front of Eglantine. Angel doesn’t give him a chance to give voice to his concerns before she is ushering him through the familiar halls to where the house tailors are quartered. 

Eglantine’s head tailor is myopic and old and has never been overly fond of Charles, so he’s glad when he has his apprentice take Charles’ measurements. Charles doesn’t recognize him, although there is a heavy undercurrent of shame fogged around him that makes Charles want to retch up his hastily eaten half of pastry.  
“I don’t know you,” he says, thickly, trying not to tremble as the boy measures him for his inseam. 

“What?” the boy asks, blinking up at him, his surprise at being addressed apparent. He is at least three years younger than Charles, and his lack of courtly manners gives him away as somebody who wasn’t born into the service of naamah.

“I was fostered here,” Charles explains. 

The boy looks taken aback. “It is rare to get servants of naamah who haven’t made their marque seeking Master Apollinaire’s services.” Charles shrugs. It is too much to explain that Fury must always have the best. When Charles remains silent the boy continues, “I was purchased only six months ago.” 

“Oh, from what house?” Charles asks. 

The boy colors. “From no house.” 

Charles doesn’t have any idea what to say. It happens more often than people realize--parents selling pretty unwanted children into the service for coin--certainly more often than they get dedicated to the church. But nobody with any sense of decorum likes to speak of it. 

He is almost glad when Master Apollinaire shuffles into the room with a face like thunder. “I thought I had been well quit of you,” he says darkly to Charles, looking him up and down with narrowed eyes. He mutters a few things to himself and then sighs gustily. “Hank, go get some of the silk charmeuse from the store room.” 

They spend hours with Charles up on the little dais, trying very hard not to shift from foot to foot as Angel and Master Apollinaire argue about designs and weaves, Hank sent back to the store room for more and more bolts of cloth until there is a veritable forest of fabric propped up against the walls. 

As Angel and the tailor haggle over price, Charles wanders over to the table where Hank is sketching, his attention so focused he doesn’t notice Charles’ approach. Alongside the typical drawings of sleeve fittings and tucks and gussets on various outfits he's taken down for Master Apollinaire is a many jointed winged creation. Hank furiously scribbles notes in an illegible scrawl next to it, words getting tinier and more cramped as he runs out of space on the page.

“Is that for somebody’s outfit?” Charles asks, peering over his shoulder. 

Hank starts, jolting upright in his seat, and shoves the drawing under a pile of papers and fabric swatches. Charles guesses not. 

“Listen,” he says, “I’m not going to say anything to Master Apollinaire that your doodling all over your work. Please tell me what that thing with the wings was.” 

“A...a flying machine,” Hank says tentatively, eyes resolutely on the floor. The sense of shame filling up the room increases. He stutters and stumbles on a further explanation. “I know it’s just a fancy, I have no idea if I could really get it to work, but I’ve been studying birds...” he trails off, eyes shifting despondently back and forth between the drawing and Charles. 

“But that’s wonderful,” Charles says. “Show it to me a second time?” 

Hank stares at him, clearly unable to believe what Charles is saying. 

“Please,” he asks as sweetly as possible. 

Hank sighs and fishes the paper out from underneath the pile. Now that he’s able to see it more clearly, Charles notices that Hank has made notations for materials and scale, suggesting rice paper and bamboo like the Ch’in use. 

“How would you power it?” he asks. “Clockwork?”

Hank smiles, clearly cheered at Charles’ obvious insistence. “That’s my stumbling point. But the math suggests it’s theoretically sound once I figure out a system to continuously flap the wings.”

“That’s amazing,” Charles says, running his eyes over the diagram. “Do you have more?” 

“We-ell...” Hank says, suddenly hesitant again. 

Charles is prepared to wheedle it out of him when Angel calls to him, “Stop bothering Master Apollinaire’s apprentice and let’s go.” 

“Next time,” Charles says, placing a hand on Hank’s shoulder quickly before scurrying out after Angel. 

*

He regales the entire Fury household with tales of Hank’s diagrams of the flying machine for days afterwards. Anything to distract from the seemingly inexhaustible subject of Charles’ upcoming illicit appointment with the crown princess. 

“Enough, I can't think,” Nick finally says behind his daily broadsheet. Moira only just smothers a laugh at Charles’ put out expression. 

“I can’t help it! He’s wasting away in that fusty old buzzard’s shop sewing the trim on trousers! It’s patently ridiculous!” 

“Much like the fact that we require you not to make explosions in your rooms after dark, I imagine,” Nick says dryly. 

Charles even mentions it to Raven when he escapes the many deportment lessons they’ve been foisting on him like he’s forgotten how to do everything in the wake of a royal assignation. 

“I don’t know what was wrong with him! He was so upset,” Charles tells Raven as they walk along the river through the wealthy tidy part of town they always felt too grubby and unwanted to wander through as children. They’ve taken to exploring other parts of the city, trying to get out from under Coulson’s dogged protection. “Surely, Master Apollinaire can’t be making him feel that bad about a couple of stray doodles.” 

“You didn’t just read his mind?” Raven asks, pirouetting in a new pair of slippers Charles bought her with his altogether too generous allowance. 

“Of course not!” he replies hotly. “I can’t always help it, Raven, but I do try not to violate other people’s privacy.” 

She sighs. “I know, I know.” Her expression turns thoughtful. “Perhaps we shall have to affect a rescue!” 

“What? Steal him from house Eglantine?” 

“Why not? It would serve them right!” She says, clearly warming to the idea. 

Charles snorts. “Where would we keep him?” 

Raven smiles enigmatically, stroking her chin. “I know many a place.” 

Of course she does. Raven has expanded upon the tumbling tricks Charles taught her after his own lessons and become quite good at all manner of climbing and sneaking. She’s progressed from mere petty break-ins to a score of one-woman heists. Charles can sense that Fury is itching to ask him if he can make some inquiries down in night’s doorstep about the pattern of thefts, but Charles is glad he never gives in to the impulse, because it would put him in quite a quandary. Not that he would ever give Raven up, but lying to Nick certainly wouldn’t make him feel better about it. 

“Don’t tell me anything!” Charles protests. 

Raven makes a rude noise, leaping up onto one of the stone pillars lining the river. “And spoil the mystery? Never.”

Charles smiles and jumps up after her. They make altogether too much noise, laughing and running along the bank. A pair of ladies walking along the bank with a chaperone at a discreet distance behind glare at them. Though they’re not children anymore and Charles is no longer covered in dirt and Raven no longer wears threadbare hand-me-downs, they will never fit into this part of town. No matter how many royals Charles has to service that will never change. 

*

Nevertheless, Coulson, who accompanies Charles to the palace, has to remind him not to gawk out the windows. It may be the most he’s ever said to him. Charles contents himself with looking through the coachman's eyes, although he is not as careful as he could be at masking his presence, and the coachman laughs and thumps on the roof of the carriage.

"Soon enough, boyo," he calls.

Angel explained earlier in the week when Charles’ dove grey silk outfit arrived that the King was breaking with tradition by sending him to the Dauphine.

"As a matter of course the dauphine is given her pick of any house in the Night Court."

Knowing that, Charles doesn't feel any less nervous. He plucks at his doublet and then tries not to roll his eyes. A missive had been sent to Fury's town house three days earlier to notify them all what color gown Jean would be wearing so Charles could match accordingly. It had been back to the tailor all over again, and only Hank keeping Charles entertained with stories of his own secret experiments in the dusty nooks and crannies of House Eglantine's labyrinthine rooms kept him from expiring out of monotonous taedium vitae. 

Soon the carriage is rolling up to great doors of the palace, manned by guards at all times. Jacques wishes him mirth-filled felicitations as Charles steps out and Coulson follows. It takes all of Charles’ self-control not to give him a crude gesture Raven taught him as a child in farewell. 

At the doors to the throne room, Coulson touches his elbow and says, "I will leave you here."

Charles nods and swallows. It’s not like he can get lost between here and the reception room.

Coulson's eyes run over him in steely assessment. Charles knows from his mind that he does not like men, but he hears Coulson's mental admiration. He will do alright. 

"On the morrow," Charles says softly and then the majordomo rushes to usher him through the doors into the receiving room.

Princess Jean, a pretty redhead with an expression as smooth and unknowable as marble, sits on the throne next to her grandfather. Charles has seen her during holidays and on parades, but never from this close. He knows that some people feel that Malkin's younger brother who has been foisted off in a political marriage in La Serenissima, in order to pacify the notoriously craft Stregazza, should lead in Jean's stead. Charles has often felt that has far more to do with Jean’s sex than her age or her ability to rule, but he doesn't have to read her mind to know that she has more than enough backbone.

He sinks into the pose of obeisance, head bowed.

"Rise," the King commands him. He is old and frail and his eyes droop with weary sorrow, but Charles knows they once must’ve held the same snapping intensity of Jean’s to be so revered of a monarch. But as Charles knows from his history lessons, he buried his wife and all of their children, long before he will ever go to his grave. 

Jean rises from her seat and steps down the dais, capturing his attention. She reaches forward to touch his bent head, hand only stopping in an uncertain hover at the last moment.

"You are lovely," she says, breathlessly. The first sign of any agitation on her part. Charles knows that if he comments on her looks in turn, she will grow annoyed, so he simply bows his head again and accepts the compliment with a mild thank you.

There is dinner and dancing where they are much stared at. Their outfits and complimentary coloring make them a beautiful matched pair and Charles feels like they are as scrutinized as a pair of geldings to lead a coach and four. Charles does not leave her side, standing at attention at her shoulder, even when Jean eschews the dance floor. They do not speak. Charles refrains from reading her mind. Somehow it is not quite politic, he feels, and her thoughts are quiet, as well-concealed as the expressions on her face. Courtiers drift by to pay homage to the dauphine, but also to stare at Charles, this untried adept who will deflower their crown princess. He's not quite sure how she deals with the conspicuous examination all day, every day.

At long last, just as he’s starting to feel like he’s going to rattle right off the little raised dais Jean’s chair is elevated upon, Jean rises up, signaling to all assembled their departure and everything that entails. Charles follows a pace behind as is proper.

When they get to her chambers, Jean hesitates before crossing the threshold, carefully ignoring the guards that stand on either side of the door. Charles runs a hand over the small of her back. "Your highness," he says softly and she sighs and moves into the room. She keeps her back turned to him as she discards her earrings and rings. She goes to remove the fastenings of her dress and he stops her.

"Let me do that," he says, reaching forward to unknot her laces.

"I am perfectly capable," she says shortly, but she does not make him stop. He kisses her shoulder. Somehow the fact that she is more nervous than he is, steadies him. The stiffness goes out of her body.

As he gently maneuvers her toward her titanic fourposter bed, the knowledge that this will end with his own release threatens to undo his calm completely. Everything has been leading up to this moment. It is almost inconceivable that it's finally here. 

He performs the languisement on her and is shocked to discover her amazement upon orgasm. Surely there was nothing preventing her from taking her own pleasure as there was for him? Charles knows what this feels like. He has felt it many times from the minds around him, but still it is nothing compared to the sensation of losing himself in her body, braced above her, with her long legs about his hips. It is perfect and overwhelming, almost to the point of pain and he narcissistically can’t help from feeding it by nudging her into a second climax with the touch to her mind. 

The second time, she tentatively asks to put her mouth on him, not quite able to meet his gaze. He wants to tell her not to be embarrassed or ashamed, after all he’s just as much a novice in reality as she is, but he fears she wouldn’t believe it. Either way, the feel of her mouth on him is heaven, as inexpert as it is. Not that it matters, since Charles doesn’t even know what he wants and likes. He supposes he will have a lot of time to figure this out in his rooms upon leaving this place. When she climbs astride him, steady and sure, misgivings lost in the face of his obvious impassioned distraction, it is like a benediction. Using his shoulders to lever herself up and down, fingers between her thighs on her newly discovered clitoris, he comes far too quickly, and it is only through sheer force of will and long hours of training that he manages to stay hard. 

They only stop when they both feel completely wrung out. Charles is almost dazed, brain on overload from the near constant barrage of sensation. Of course, then the crippling awkwardness of before returns in force and they lie next to each other in embarrassed silence. 

He clears his throat and tentatively asks after the Ch’in brocade cushions she had sitting on her vast window seat that they had frantically discarded for various purpose through out the room. 

“They were a gift from the ambassador, why?” 

“Eglantine house had a set from a patron.” Charles coughs delicately. “I ruined them pretty thoroughly when I decided to combine sodium hypochlorate with ammonia.” 

“Isn’t that quite toxic?” She says, propping her head up on her arm. He’s impressed that she knows that, but then Fury did say she requested him for his infamous love of experiments. 

“Oh yes, the pillows had to be thrown out, as well as a good half the carpeting and draperies. It was not my proudest hour.” 

She laughs and the tension finally abates. She seems to enjoy his many stories of the scrapes he got into, so he regales her with the tales of his misadventures before he came to live with Fury. Not that they entirely stopped once Fury took him in. Charles had accidentally set the drapes on fire at least twice. 

"I wish I could have gotten in trouble," she says with a laugh. "I never get to have any fun."

Charles makes a noise of mock-outrage. "What do you call this then?"

"A horrible, horrible chore," she replies with a laugh. "I don't know how I ever got through it so many times tonight!"

"You are cruel, princess," he says with a smile and drops a kiss to the corner of her mouth.

Later when it's time to go she hands him an ebony case. "A patron gift," she explains, looking more embarrassed at the thought that she is acknowledging Charles pleased her than anything else that they did that night. Charles accepts it carefully.

"Open it," she says, face sliding into that same stoic disposition she displayed the day before.

Charles lifts the lid, revealing a beautiful brass telescope. "Your highness, it's…"

"You may sell it if you wish," she interrupts him, "so that it may go towards your marque." The cost of his virgin price and all money he makes on subsequent assignations go to Fury, but patron gifts belong to the adept alone and may be committed towards paying the marquist. As soon as the marque is completed, Charles will be his own man, free to set up a salon, or blow things up in a chemistry lab all day long.

"It seems extraordinarily bad manners to sell a gift from a princess," he teases.

The facade cracks for a brief moment. "No, I…I know what it is to be bound in a service you did not choose."

"But I did choose it," he says, reassuring her, "and I would never sell such a beautiful piece of equipment as this. I will treasure it, always."

She lets out a breath, a genuine smile in her eyes. "I am glad."

*

When he gets back to the house he immediately seeks out the presence of Fury. He finds him in his study, two diagrams up on the walls before him.

"Ah, I see you have returned, look at the designs that Master Tielhard has--" Charles interrupts him with a fierce hug around his middle.

"Charles, this is most inappropriate!" Fury says grouchily, detangling himself. Charles grins up at him and Fury rolls his eyes. "Well, I don't need to be a mind reader to know exactly how last night went."

"Oh yes? Really, so you know how we-"

"Elua above, finish that sentence and die! Whatever was I thinking bringing two adepts into my house? You are positively unbearable." He turns back to the diagram and says, "Now look, Master Tielhard has sent over some preliminary designs for yours and Moira's marques."

Charles looks at the one Fury points to, half-expecting the eglantine rose to be worked into the design. After all, what other natural link does he have? What he finds nearly takes his breath away.

Fury clears his throat, looking suddenly uncomfortable in the face of Charles’ admiration. “It’s only because of the Night Court that the marque has typically featured flowers, I thought something different was appropriate,” he says in explanation, sounding casually arrogant about disregarding some thousand years of heritage. Not that Charles' minds thumbing his nose at the Night Court at all and so he is glad his design is special. It is symmetric as all other marques Charles has ever seen--a pair of spread raven wings overlaid with a series of dark lines demonstrating the angles and natural polygons inherent in the wings’ construction. 

“Sacred geometry,” Charles says, reaching out to trace tentative fingers over the outline. 

“It is mathematically accurate, Tielhard got the idea when I asked for something a little more cerebral.” Fury says, tapping his mouth thoughtfully. “He tells me that the raven symbolizes knowledge in Alba.” 

Charles laughs. He wonders how Raven will feel about her namesake tattooed over his back, probably insufferably smug, but the design is perfect all the same.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time there will be an Erik Lehnsherr, I promise!


	4. Enter Knight in Shining Armor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles gets a new bodyguard.

_Four years later…_

Charles walks down the steps of Mssr. Leveau’s townhouse, feeling a pleasant lassitude. He pulls his fashionable black leather gloves back onto his hands and nods as Coulson holds the door of the carriage open for him. He gets in and Coulson climbs in after, giving the roof a thump to signal they’re ready to go to the coachman. 

The assignation was informative. Charles is always glad when he has information for Fury. Often enough Charles finds himself fucking some hapless patron, scanning the brains of the household and it’s master, and finding absolutely nothing. Those times are tiring and trying and he always feels somewhat regretful afterwards. But Leveau, they correctly suspected, was involved with a group of privateers that had been keeping the D’Angeline fleet busy for months. Charles had fucked him, over his desk, picking the code to read his ledgers right out of his head. Now Charles gets to go home to a nice bath and then an evening in Night’s Doorstep with Raven. 

He never even senses the minds that mean to do them ill until too late, something that will trouble him for weeks afterwards. The carriage rocks suddenly and Charles starts as a crossbow bolt stabs itself halfway through the mahogany door. They roll to a halt amid the clatter of hooves and men’s raised voices. There’s a cut-off shout and then the coachman’s presence is snuffed out of the world completely. Charles freezes in shocked surprise, probing the space where he used to be, like a tongue against an absent tooth. “He’s...he’s dead,” Charles says unsteadily. Coulson puts a hand on his thigh, mind resounding with _stay here_ so loud it hurts. He pushes out of the carriage, shutting the door. 

Charles stays frozen in helpless shock for a moment longer and then he expands his powers outward, looking through their attackers eyes. It is too late. Coulson has felled two of the five toughs Charles senses in the area, but the man carrying the crossbow tightens his finger on the trigger before Charles can clamp down on the action. 

He watches through the remaining attackers eyes and Coulson’s own in a horrified stupor as the bolt flies true, piercing Coulson through the throat. His last thought is an exhortation for Charles to run. Charles, stunned, and holds the assailants frozen, unable to process. 

He feels their mental panic spike and realizes he has frozen everything, their lungs breathing and their hearts beating. For one horrifying moment he wants to hold onto the whole thing, feel the life seep out of them, but then he lets go, disgusted and terrified of himself. They tumble off their horses, gasping for breath and Charles stumbles out of the carriage and away from them. He knows he should hold onto them, probe their consciousness for answers, but he needs to be as far away from them and the overwhelming tang of death that clings to the whole street. 

He sprints through the streets, tears running down his face. His lungs burn, but he does not stop, he has to take it on faith that he stunned the men enough that they will not attempt pursuit. He cannot bring himself to seek the repulsive touch of their psyches out. When he reaches Fury’s property, the gates are thrust open, Moira and the bewildered staff waiting to usher him inside. He collapses in the courtyard, shivering mightily. 

“They killed them, they killed them,” he repeats, hysterical as Moira tries to get him back onto his feet. Charles has felt death before, minds absent where before they’d taken up so much space, but nobody he knows, and never in his presence. It was horrible. It felt like being dragged down into dark churning water, ankles weighted with rocks. 

Fury comes at a run, around him everybody is shouting and a kitchen boy is dispatched to the local constabulary. Charles is only half-aware of this, because he’s trapped in that horrible moment of Coulson’s death, feeling the arrow pierce his throat and an inexorable despair in the face of his own demise as if he was the one killed. He does not feel it when somebody lifts his head and pours a draught down his throat, but he feels the darkness descend over him like somebody snuffed out the light. 

*

Charles accepts no assignations for two weeks. Fury would not let him or Moira out even if they wanted to go. So he ensconces himself in the library, reading silly novels and trying not to think about dark water. Fury even sends for Raven, although he does not approve of her in the slightest. Charles sits with her in the garden, sipping tea and doing his best to laugh. Sometimes, Moira joins them, but Raven makes it quite clear that Moira annoys her. Charles feels awkward, but he doesn’t have it in him to fight, and Moira, in her unending compassion, understands and leaves them alone. 

Finally one morning Charles goes to Fury’s study and knocks on the door. He needs to set up an appointment with Master Tielhard. His last patron gift will add another inch to his marque and he can’t avoid the world forever. 

“What is it?” Fury yells through the door. 

“May I speak with you?” Charles answers. 

“Enter,” Fury calls back and Charles pushes open the door, coming to a halt at the sight of a man standing at military attention in front of Fury’s desk. 

“What?” he starts, subconscious unconsciously reaching towards this other person. He has to pull back on it so hard it feels like a snapped thread. The man turns his head and Charles realizes he must be a Cassiline, especially dressed in all that ashy gray. Nobody else would willingly choose to wear that burial shroud. 

It’s a tragedy, because the man is beautiful, absolutely heartrendingly gorgeous. Charles swallows. 

“Meet your new escort, Erik Lehnsherr,” Fury says. The Cassiline inclines his head gravely, his face a stiff mask. 

Even as he rolls the name around in his mouth--assuredly not D’Angeline, perhaps from the low countries--he hears himself saying, “I don’t need an escort, I thought I proved myself adequately capable of defending myself.” 

_Do not think me a fool. You can’t be expected to read the minds of everybody who comes into your presence._ Fury thinks at him. Obviously for all that he plans to trust this Cassiline with their safety, he has not deemed him ready to know Charles’s secret or even their larger purpose. Aloud, he says, “Think of Moira and if I may say, however capable you are at defending yourself, we must think of propriety. An adept must always have an escort.” 

Charles is nearly bowled over by the strong mental wave of derision rolling off Erik. He seels all too clearly that this was not an assignment the cassiline asked for. 

It makes Charles bridle and he bites off, “What can you do that Coulson could not?” 

Fury shakes his head at him in warning, but the Cassiline has risen to the bait. “Your Coulson,” Erik says like it’s a bad taste in his mouth, “was expelled from the brotherhood halfway through his training. There is a great deal that I can do that your Coulson never could have.” 

Charles stares at him, lips parted. “Un--unbelievable,” he says and stomps out of the room. 

*

Erik accompanies him to his first assignation later that week.

They'd barely spoken two words to each other in all that time. Charles had locked himself in the library, only opening the doors to admit food, much to Fury's amusement. 

"You're being a child," Fury told him, poking his head through the door. 

"There is absolutely no other swordhand in the kingdom available?"

Fury snorted and refused to answer.

Charles' only comfort, petty though it was, was that Erik had no more patience for Moira than he did for Charles. 

Erik took over the inner courtyard to practice the flowing forms known only to the Cassiline brotherhood. If anybody thought Charles had taken to watching him, hidden on the balcony that ringed the courtyard, well, he was D'angeline, and even if Erik was an absolute insufferable prig who disdained of nearly every aspect of the Fury Household, he was breathtaking. It was no hard feat to believe that Erik was fifty times the fighter that Coulson was, all you had to do was watch him as he bent and struck, wiping out invisible opponents with twin daggers that usually adorned his wrists in armored vambraces. The broadsword he carried strapped across his back went completely untouched. 

Stepping outside, the first time he's left the house in weeks with Erik at his back makes him feel better. And then he is annoyed with himself for the weakness. It only occurs to him as Erik sits on the bench opposite him, stone-faced, that his thoughts are quiet. He thinks of his forms, and of the monastery. He does not think about how Charles irks him at all, and Charles can't help but be amused.

Erik lifts a brow at Charles' unexplained smile. Charles rolls his eyes and shakes his head. "I am merely happy to have an assignation."

"You enjoy it then?" He says, arms crossed. He looks mildly revolted. 

"Why would I not? 'Love as thou wilt,'" Charles says, knowing his eyes have gone hard. There is precious little about the gods or the matters of religion that concern him, but Charles has a healthy respect for the sacred precept their fair country was founded upon even if it was steeped in religious superstition. It is in his blood to share his body, the only solace he knows how to give. If Erik thinks him a depraved injured soul that is his cross to bear. Although Charles does miss the former tranquility of Erik's mind. His horror at Charles' quotation is like a thunderstorm across a previously undisturbed lake. He thinks Charles, and all denizens of the Night Court, do not understand what those words really mean.

He takes in the muscle ticking in Erik's jaw, the way his strong hands have gone white knuckled. He is beautiful even in righteous anger. Really, it’s not fair. It makes Charles' tongue sharper than he originally intended. "Why are you here then in this carriage if you despise me and my wickedness so much?"

Erik snorts. "You think I had a choice? No, I did not." He turns to stare at the heavily curtained window like he can see through it to the city rushing past. "But I. do. my. duty."

"Blessed angels, how the sky would come tumbling down on us if you didn't," Charles replies nastily. It is sickly satisfying when Erik's mind registers the hit to his pride.

But Erik surprises him, leaning into Charles' space so that Charles can see the flecks of amber in his eyes. "What I cannot understand is why my lord Fury would need one such as me to guard you and your delicate little compatriot," he says, meaning Moira. "And what hold would Fury have over the prefect of our order to grant him a Cassiline to guard two whores?"

Charles's smile is a weapon thrown as handily as any dagger. "Perhaps we are very, very _good_ ," he says, reaching out to put a practiced hand on Erik's knee, thumb digging into tensed muscle and then swiping over it, "at what we do."

But Charles feels no attraction coming from Erik, provoked or otherwise. He brushes Charles' hand off unceremoniously, like whores grope him in carriages all the time.

"I know what they say about your master," Erik says, voice soft like the whisper of steel out of its sheath. "I know what you are. And you tell me you go to them for the joy of it? Only to steal their dearest secrets?"

Charles holds his gaze, angry as he has never been in his entire life. He has to restrain himself from seizing all the people in the area and making them shout at Erik with his own rage. It requires a breath, a moment to regain control. "If you know what it is I do, than you know why I do it."

Erik makes a derisive noise. "I see no value or honor in subterfuge."

"Of course, of course. Only a man as sainted and pure as you would know of honor," Charles replies, staring past Erik's shoulder to the patterned wood of the carriage. "Be silent, Cassiline, you are not here for your tongue."

If Charles puts more of a command in his voice than he means to, Erik's smirk and spread hands--a parody of an apology--are no capitulation. He looks away from Charles, dismissing him. The anger and chaos in his mind quieting to that tranquil lake once more. Charles is furious. He wants to throw things, maybe set Erik's Cassiline grays on fire. He would dearly love to taunt him with memories of his assignations, the most wanton and salacious of them. The ones where Charles makes them beg and plead for him to fill them up, the ones where Charles worships them with his mouth until they can take it no more. And the bone-deep satisfaction they have afterwards. Then Erik can tell him how wrong it is. But it would not do. Erik is implacable.

*

The assignation is a difficult one, because the patron is in mourning for a lost love, but casting aside his own pain soothes Charles' battered psyche. Nevertheless, he cannot help a stumble when he walks into the antechamber where Erik waits, arms crossed on the hilts of his daggers, at military attention.

Erik is across the room in seconds, steadying Charles with a strong hand on his upper arm. Charles nearly shrugs him off, but Erik’s mind is filled only with concern, grudging though it may be. Charles lets Erik lead him out of the house and into the waiting carriage.

"Is it always like this?" Erik asks, getting Charles settled on the bench before sliding in across from him.

Charles leans his head back and carefully meets Erik's eyes. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse. "He lost his lover nearly a year ago to illness. It haunts him still."

Erik looks shocked and Charles sighs. "It is not all secrets and lies, Cassiline. Sometimes it is exactly as it appears."

"What's that?" Erik asks, pointing to a velvet pouch dangling off his belt that Charles did not have before he went into the house.

Charles smiles wearily. "A patron gift," he says, upending the pouch of deep green emeralds into his open palm.

He is assaulted by Erik's preposterous vision of him decked out gaudily in the stones and he ducks his head to hide a grin. "They will go to pay the Marquist."

"A step closer to freedom," Erik says, ironic.

Charles watches him through half-lidded eyes. "A step closer to mastery," he corrects. The coach's rocking is soothing, and his eyes feel heavy. He has spent the better part of six hours trying to make a man forget the only person he ever loved. This exhaustion is earned. With a yawn he slides into sleep under Erik's watchful gaze.

He wakes briefly when they come to a halt. Erik doesn't even attempt to rouse him, merely slides his arms under Charles' body and picks him up like he weighs nothing. His heart beats in Charles' ear like the powerful strokes of a bird's wings. It feels right. He has a sneaking suspicion that that should bother him, but then he's gone again.

*


	5. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things begin to heat up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this update is so much later than the previous ones! I was at Coachella last weekend and it totally kicked my ass and stole my lunch money!

He had hoped that Erik wouldn't need to attend him on his errands or that Moira would have ten engagements in a row and he’d be blessedly free of him. Anything to give him a little breathing room, but Fury seems to think Erik is fine right where he is. Charles is going to go mad. On the one hand, things seem to be better between them after their carriage clash, on the other, Charles finds himself dangerously attracted to Erik and he doesn’t want it or like it in the slightest.

"Take him if you sneak off to Night's Doorstep," Fury says before Charles can even get a word out. 

“You...you can’t be serious, my time in Night’s Doorstep belongs to me!” 

“Charles, not anymore,” Fury says and dismisses with him a glance. They still haven’t found who Coulson’s killers are, something Charles continues to be upset about. He failed at his one job, but if Fury is investigating the matter, it’s without Charles’ help or knowledge. 

Charles hadn’t been planning to sneak off, but now he’s determined. He cloaks himself from all the servants’ minds with ease borne of much practice and vaults the garden wall. And promptly screams in surprise when he turns around and finds Erik already leaning against the back gate, arms crossed so that his vambraces are visible. 

“Elua!” he says, hand pressed to his heart. He can’t believe Erik snuck up on him. Or rather he can, since he’s been trying so hard to block Erik’s consciousness from his mind, but how in all the seven hells could Erik have known?

“Master Fury told me to expect you,” Erik replies, obviously amused, and Charles has to read his mind to ensure that Erik isn’t reading his own. “To Night’s Doorstep?” he proposes sardonically. 

Charles has the sudden urge to send him around the city barking like a dog, but he restrains himself at the last moment. When he gets back he’ll take his revenge by doing alchemical experiments on the roof above Fury’s bedroom. Childish maybe, but this is getting ridiculous. As they navigate the windy streets leading to the city’s seedier quarters, he tries not to betray how much Erik walking behind and to the right of his shoulder in a mockery of a position of subservience is bothering him. Erik’s growing amusement washing over him in persistent waves proves how unsuccessful that is. 

“Listen,” Charles whispers furiously, pulling up to a stop as the alleys and thoroughfares begin to narrow. Erik only just avoids walking into Charles’ back. “The people here won’t take well to a Cassiline.” 

Erik raises a brow. He doesn’t give a good goddamn how they feel about him and the look on his face says as much. 

Charles grumbles, “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He finds Raven at their usual tavern. Clearly she’s had a good run of it, because her fingers are covered in opulent rings and she’s wearing a rich velvet dress that would make even Moira jealous. There are people everywhere, demanding Raven this, Raven that. Charles has never seen her so happy. 

She nearly drops her tankard full of ale at the sight of Erik. 

_Mother of Elua, why on earth have you brought a blessed Cassiline to Night’s Doorstep._ She projects at him in a rare display of trust for his powers. 

_He wanted to come,_ Charles thinks back, acidly. 

And of course, barely half an hour of good conversation later, all hell breaks loose. Some enterprising (and unreservedly foolish) pervert decides to give Erik’s rear an ungentle palming. Erik, who has undoubtedly never had his backside groped and obviously does not enjoy the advance, breaks said enterprising pervert’s hand. Which of course, offends the enterprising pervert’s woman, who hurls her tankard of ale on Erik and starts screaming like a harpy. Within seconds the place has erupted in a brawl. Charles could easily intervene, but he doesn’t think he’s going to. 

Raven stands off to the side with him, holding only the handle of her ale mug (the rest having been lost when she used it to club somebody who got too close), and shakes her head. “Are you quite proud of yourself?”

Charles laughs and rubs his hands together as Erik attempts alternately to break the fight apart and to beat the ever-loving tar out of anybody who comes too close. Raven rolls her eyes at him and goes off to get herself another drink. Charles merely wishes all of the chairs weren’t currently being utilized as bludgeons, because he could use a seat for the unexpected entertainment. 

Erik proves himself woefully overmatched—as a Cassiline he’s not allowed to do damage unless it is in obvious defense of himself or his charge. The rest of the patrons have no problem gleefully pounding on each other. Finally, after a while, Charles’ sense of chivalry kicks in and he decides enough is quite enough. The tankard of mulled wine slopped over his trousers help. He inserts himself into the melee to grab Erik about the shoulders and tug him bodily out of the pub. Erik gets ungracefully shoved into a laundress Charles knows holds arm wrestling contests that she never loses, and Charles nearly expires from laughter when she gathers him up to her bosom. The world seems at last willing to grant him a couple favors. 

“My, my you are a pretty one,” she says as Erik struggles to breathe against her cleavage. “They say you’re all as pure as the driven snow.” 

“Ah Melanie...” he pauses when laughter threatens to overtake him, “this one is mine. Get’s a good bit of fun dressing up like a priest.” 

Melanie looks intrigued, but she lets him go and they stumble out into the night air. 

“Nevermind, you may _always_ come with me to Night’s Doorstep. That was better theater than I’ve seen in ages.” 

Erik—covered in several glasses of ale, hair dripping into his eyes, blushing from Charles’ implication of perversity, with a truly fearsome scowl twisting his mouth—somehow he still manages to be utterly devastating. “Glad...to be of service,” he grits out.

*

Charles woefully only rarely dreams his own dreams. In sleep he has none of the control of his waking hours. But tonight the dream is decidedly his. It’s against his wall, next to his window, that he dreams of being fucked, hard and rough, his hands pinned above his head in an iron grip. He wakes up to sticky sheets and Erik’s name on his lips. Charles nearly screams in frustrated rage. He settles for punching his pillow a few times. 

This is getting out of control. No adept should be soiling their sheets in this manner, ever. It’s like a musician banging at an out-of-tune piano. He gets out of bed and forces his roiling mind to meditate. It’s easier for Charles than it is for other people, since he spends so much of his time controlling exactly what he thinks about and where he thinks it. Tonight however, he can’t stop running Erik working through his traditional Cassiline forms, that goddamn smirk firmly in place, over and over in his head. 

The next morning, tired and irritable and snapping at everybody, Fury tells him he’s booked him an appointment with Master Tielhard. Charles sighs. 

“Erik?” He’s not entirely sure why, but Erik’s condemning thoughts hovering over him while Master Tielhard finishes up a design across his skin that only further cements and clarifies Charles’ position feels like a step too far. 

Fury stares at him expressionlessly. He sets his cup of tea down. “Charles.” 

Charles knows this is his last warning, before Fury gets well and truly angry with him. “Alright, alright. I give in. I’ll stop fighting you on it.” 

_It’s for your own safety_ , he hears unexpectedly loudly in his head. Charles winces and wonders how long Fury spent practicing that booming mental shout. He has never been above theatrics to get what he wants. 

Erik and the carriage are summoned and Charles does his best not to drag his feet or look too miserable.

*

Master Tielhard is all gruff efficiency, while his shy apprentice clatters around in the backroom while the master harangues him. He strips Charles of his shirt and coat and then impatiently gestures at him to lie down on the table. Erik lounges in the corner of the room, his arms crossed in his familiar stance. Charles meets his eyes, feeling unwarrantedly shy, before turning around and stretching out on the table. 

Erik has never seen the design uncovered. He has never seen Charles uncovered at all. Charles somewhat sardonically feels he’s the most restrained harlot there ever was, regardless of Erik’s thoughts on the matter. Moira has been known to prowl the house in her sheer morning gown and she certainly hasn’t bothered to stop just because of the house’s sudden addition of a Cassiline brother. 

Master Tielhard smacks him on the behind after drawing his trousers low on his waist to expose the dimples alongside Charles’ spine. “Settle,” he says, “Lie naturally.” 

With an effort, Charles manages to force the tension out of his body and relax. He pillows his head on his arms and catches the awed gaze of the apprentice, who blushes radiantly and lowers unbelievable long lashes. Charles smiles in fond amusement. If he were a little older, Charles would have no trouble taking the boy out the back and showing him a trick or too.

“Are you warm enough?” the apprentice asks, voice cracking as if he too is imagining the same thing. 

Charles nods and braces himself for the first touch of the needle. There’s not much left to be inked in—a year, maybe even a season, and his marque will be completed. Although he doubts his work with Fury will be concluded. Master Tielhard is fast and economical with both ink and needle, the best in the whole of Terre D’ange if not the western continent. Charles doesn’t mind the pain, but he finds it itchy and difficult to stay still. Master Tielhard is forever smacking his bottom and exhorting him not to move. 

There’s a growing sense of arousal permeating the room, as Master Tielhard works on the next inch of the tattoo. After some investigation, Charles is flabbergasted to trace its emanation back to Erik rather than the boy. Erik, who has had nothing but disdain and cold removal at the thought of Charles and his body and all that he uses it for. Has he been so little exposed to nudity that a little flash of Charles’ back and the beginning swell of his buttocks is enough to titillate? Charles finds it a mildly depressing thought. Perhaps he’s wrong entirely and his brain is just hoping Erik is as disturbed about Charles as Charles is about Erik.

He cranes his neck to meet Erik’s gaze and finds his expression just as tight and masklike as it always is when he’s not mocking Charles’ mercilessly. It’s almost enough to convince him he’s gone entirely insane and is crossing streams of consciousness in his head. Erik glares even more hatefully at Charles than usual when he finds him looking and Charles drops his eyes quickly. As Master Tielhard begins to limn the blades of his shoulders another spike of excitement fills the room, making Charles tremble. He wonders if Erik is hard underneath that ridiculous Cassiline sack he always wears, confused and thoughtful about his new knowledge, but nevertheless convinced he’s not wrongfully attributing anything at all. 

As the session continues, he keeps sneaking looks back at Erik, seeing color gradually rise in his cheeks. It’s boggling and Charles keeps trying to come up with explanations, trying most desperately to convince himself that he doesn’t want Erik’s interest. When he feels himself beginning to stiffen off of Erik’s backwash, the heat roaring as strongly through him as any of Erik’s less flattering thoughts about Charles’, he shuts down his consciousness of the room, forcing himself to wallow in almost uncomfortable psychological silence. However unused to the lack of noise he is, it is far preferable to embarrassing himself on the table over Erik’s foundering control. 

When Master Tielhard blessedly pronounces that he’s done for the day and the apprentice comes forward to wipe down Charles’ tender back, he is more than a little relieved. Only the mental deadening of the room had willed his erection away. Erik growls that he’ll be waiting for Charles outside, stomping out before anybody can respond. It is abrupt enough that both the apprentice and Master Tielhard stare after him. Charles feels absurdly like he should apologize for Erik's behavior.

“Cassilines,” Tielhard says after a long moment, shaking his head. He directs the apprentice to bandage up Charles’ back. “Peculiar, the lot of them.”

Charles laughs and wishes that was all Erik was. 

“Are you quite alright?” he asks minutes later, exiting the shop now fully covered and unable to resist poking the bear a little bit. Erik rolls his eyes at him and hands him up into the carriage without the merest whisper of interest, like he hadn’t been turned on by the sight of Charles arranged on that table, Master Tielhard carefully etching the wings into his skin. 

Charles sighs in disappointment, trying to tell himself it’s because it’s clear he will never understand Erik and not because he greatly craved Erik’s desire.


	6. A palette of emotions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a little more of Erik becomes clear.

Charles knows he’s in trouble when he starts getting tangled up in Erik’s dreaming consciousness every night. When he was little, his mind unerringly sought his mother, and later Raven, but the part of him that never really goes to sleep had been tempered by Fury’s training. It had been many years since he learned to harness his wandering mind in. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so awful, but for the fact that Erik has turbulent and horrifying nightmares—nightmares that have the harsh finality of well-cemented memories.

Erik’s sleeping brain plays a scene of two people his subconscious associates with love and home and stability—parents, better ones than Charles ever had—driving a merchant caravan from the near east all the way to the more familiar shores of the Aegean sea. It rains and the unpaved road turns to earthen mulch—a wheel on the lead caravan breaks under the strain, forcing them all to an unwelcome halt. Bandits waterfall inexorably down from the mountains, their Skaldic hired swords turn on them, dispatching everybody in their path until only Erik is left alive, marred only by a thin scratch above his eyebrow. They drag him, screaming himself hoarse, from the cooling corpses of his mother and father. 

Erik dreams—if only the wheel didn’t break, if only they’d gotten a better head start and beaten the rain, if only they’d hired trustworthy guards, but above it all—if only they hadn’t been Yeshuite. On no other people would such wholesale slaughter be perpetrated. The anger and resentment of this follows Charles into his waking hours.

Sometimes Erik dreams of running through the woods, trees so thick and numerous the light barely shines through, never running fast or far enough, too tired and too thin, shins aching and lungs burning. Erik knows he’s faster than this, but he can’t widen the distance between him and the amorphous entity of wrong and bad and never again that pursues him.

And Charles wakes up feeling sick—not because of the sadness or the tragedy of these memories, a nightly commemoration of his bodyguard’s parent’s death. Unfortunately Charles is almost inured to the ailments of the world, sensing the depredations and heartbreak that all fall victim to sooner or later. Charles wakes up woozy with illness and disorientation because, somehow, it feels like he’s profaning a secret sanctum—the root of all Erik’s considerable discipline. Erik doesn’t know about Charles’ abilities, he is not allowed to know, and Charles clumsily plodding through his mind in his sleep is not deserved. 

But he can’t stop. His unsconscious mind likes the feel of Erik’s—it feels right, somehow exactly like he always wanted when he reached for his mother’s mind. If that’s not disquieting, Charles doesn’t know what is. So Charles does the only thing he can: he ignores it. He doesn’t reach out a soothing hand every time Erik’s ire spikes at the insults about his celibacy readily handed out by D’angeline citizens rich and poor, cultured and gauche alike. And if he buys Erik’s favorite pastry in a street stall because it reminds him of the Rugelach—a harsh Germanic word that resonates in the forgotten corners of Erik’s awareness—his mother made when they were anywhere long enough to have an oven, well, that’s just him trying to apease Erik’s irascible nature. But Charles' patience is not limitless. 

One day, Erik is particularly sour, and after an assignation later followed by a charming evening fete that Erik manages to darken with his thunderous expression, causing guests to veer away from Charles and Moira with apologetic fluttered hands and nervous smiles, Charles has had enough. 

“Would you please do me the honor explaining this entirely unwarranted behavior?” he growls, after dragging Erik aside onto a secluded balcony.

Erik removes Charles’ hand from his tunic with an offended twist of his lips. “It is nothing.” 

“It is not nothing! You have had a larger thorn in your ass than usual,” Charles replies, doing everything he can not to just take a peak. He has always been glad that the emotional seepage from Erik is relatively low compared to most of the world. A fact he has noticed in all priests, whether they be mischievous priestesses of Naamah or lemon-sucking Cassiline brothers. But right at this moment, he would really love for Erik to give himself away. 

“I can hear, you know,” Erik snarls at him. 

“Yes, that was not a topic up for debate, are you going to tell me the price of Ch’in tea next?”

Erik unexpectedly colors, but his voice does not lack for asperity. “During your rendezvous, you twit.” 

Charles blinks at him owlishly and then finds himself absurdly blushing as well. This is outrageous—Charles is after all, little more than a prostitute. You would think absolutely nothing could shame him at this juncture and yet, here he stands, face flaming, trying desperately not to drop his gaze from Erik’s in a show of retreat. He ruminates what on earth could have caused this outburst now and then suddenly it comes to him. Earlier that day, the woman who commissioned his services had been especially vocal and creative. Afterwards, having all but worn Charles out, she had given him a flower fashioned from cut crystal as a gift. It was fine work and Charles liked it and he is not, full stop, going to be made ashamed of it. He’d spent far too much of his life familiar with that emotion. “That’s the way it is, Cassiline, I cannot muffle my patrons to preserve your maidenly virtue.” 

“And you cannot expect me to sit idly by, listening to such depravity, week after week.” 

“And I suppose it’s different for Moira?” Charles replies, snidely. Of course it is. Erik may not be seeking Moira out for her company, but he definitely saves the insults and derision for Charles, hardly even bothering to moderate them in Fury’s presence. Charles has never come across anything so unendingly galling in his life. He glares at Erik and waits for the abuse sure to follow. 

“Her patrons are not so…” Erik pauses, searching for the right word, “enthusiastic.” The emphasis he places on the word says just how much he thinks of that idea. 

Charles can’t help the laughter that bursts past his lips at this ridiculous pronouncement. “I think you just called me the better whore, darling.” 

“To be sure, I was suffering no illusions on that score,” Erik answers darkly. 

“Mmm,” Charles replies, “Life is trying, or so I’ve been told, you’ll just have to suffer through it. If it makes you feel better you can call it a test of faith. You ascetic sorts like that, don’t you?”

The look Erik gives him is pure poison, but Charles has decided he’s done concerning himself with Erik’s mercurial moods. He pushes away the bitter disappointment that there is exactly nothing he can do to stem Erik’s continuing antipathy for him and blows Erik a kiss before returning to the party, determined to have a good time. 

If he smiles too brightly and drinks far too much champagne and wanders aimlessly through the minds of the guests searching for interesting tidbits, the only one who can tell is Moira. 

*

Charles has never directly used his tricks to slip Erik’s grasp, mostly because Fury would know at once, and give Charles the verbal thrashing of his life and send him down to the country for a month like he’s been threatening for years. But he wants go see Hank again and he doesn’t want Erik there making it awkward and onerous. He walks right out under Erik’s nose with only a small twinge of remorse and hires a carriage to take him to the Night Court. He snooped ahead of time to make sure Hank’s stuffy old master has an appointment with an important enough client to demand his presence at their residence. 

He finds Hank on the tallest spire of Eglantine’s sprawling complex, dropping objects off the side of the building and making notes in a little leatherbound book. 

“Hullo!” Charles calls, “Are you testing out Mssr. Galilei’s hypothesis on dynamics?”

Hank whirls around in surprise, jettisoning the notebook off the roof and nearly tripping over the side himself. 

When he rights himself, he’s redfaced and shaking and thinking very hard at Charles not to look at his feet, which, of course, Charles cannot help but doing. He drops his eyes and finds that Hank’s toes are not at all correct, not even slightly, for the human skeleton. Instead they seem to resemble the appendages of a chimpanzee as Charles has only seen in anatomical diagrams. 

“How did you--” he says, meaning to ask how Hank keeps those things shoved into boots, but Hank misinterprets it and interrupts with, “I was born this way!” 

“Well, of course,” Charles says, still staring at them, trying to get a closer look as Hank shuffles uncomfortably. “I was merely wondering how you can bear to wear shoes all day long.” 

Hank clears his throat. “I can’t, not really, the boots I fashioned for myself are not of the mode, the dowayne says, but I’m allowed to go barefoot if there are no patrons around.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Charles says, “does she make you wear slippers when you’re with a patron?” 

Hank colors an even deeper red and says lowly, “I don’t get patrons.” 

Hank is a comely boy--tall, slender, with deep blue eyes and a smattering of charming freckles, and Charles would gladly take him to bed. “Not because of your feet?” 

Hank shrugs and sinks down to the rooftop, arms wrapped around his legs. “The dowayne took me out of charity.” 

“That’s nonsense!” Charles yells. “She’s getting years of free labor out of you! And you a skilled draftsmen. Great Elua, I think more and more that woman should’ve been an adept of Briony!”

Hank miserably lowers his chin to his knees. “Don’t--don’t tell anyone,” he whispers. 

Charles pulls up short, chagrined. He reaches out to touch Hank, but thinks better of it. _Of course not_ , he says, directly into Hank’s mind and smiles as Hank’s face slowly grows lighter with wonder. 

“How do you do that?” he asks, reaching out like he can feel whatever agent that allows Charles to connect with others in the very air. 

Charles shakes his head. “I don’t know, your guess is as good as mine.” The thought seems to make Hank miserable again. 

Charles goes to sit down beside him. “I came to see you, because of those drawings you made. I am very starved for academic conversation, you understand?” Hank raises a brow at him and Charles sighs. “The university type are too poor and too lofty in ideals to talk physics and astronomy with a common whore.” 

Hanks nods at him and then looks down, flexing his toes in studied consideration. Charles watches the tarsals and metatarsals unfurl in fascination. Hank clears his throat and says mischievously, “If you want to talk with scholars, you should probably know that it wasn’t Galileo’s hypothesis of dynamics, but Simon Stevinus, of the low countries.” 

“Oh, indeed?” 

Hank nods. “It’s for work on my flying machine. Although I calculate I will be well into my seventies before I can begin any real work on it.” He tosses it off flippantly, but Charles can feel the pain behind it running over his nerves like scouring sand. 

“What?” 

“I can’t take any assignations, I’m a lowly apprentice who earns no patron gifts, and that is a conservative estimate at best.” 

Not for the first time, Charles burns with the injustice and spitefulness of it all. They must fit into these set boxes of beauty, of behavior, of economic parity--he thinks of Raven thieving from fat D’angeline’s to keep her mother’s laundry business afloat--they are all victims. Even endlessly cantankerous Erik. Hank flinches away from it and Charles knows he hasn’t reigned himself in well enough. He bites his lip sheepishly, trying to banish the bitter thoughts. “I wish I could do something.” 

Hank shrugs listlessly. “I’d settle for a new notebook.” He peers over the edge of the roof at the notebook lying skewered on a rosebush. Charles laughs and Hank does his best to smile. “Will you tell me about your capabilities?”

“I suppose, if you can find it in yourself to tell me about yours?” Hank looks embarrassed again, but nods after a long moment. 

They pass the entire afternoon that way, in conversation about flying machines and Copernicans and special abilities that nobody should have. Charles sneaks them out of the House and into one of Night’s Doorsteps better tea parlors, masking Hank’s troublesome feet from all eyes so that Hank may go unshod. He peppers Hank with all sorts of ideas to steal him out from under Eglantine's nose, just like Raven suggested. Have Fury purchase him (although to Charles sadness, Fury is nothing if not pragmatic, and what use would he find for a boy like Hank?), or commission eight new wardrobes and shower him in patron gifts, steal him away to Tiberium and the university there. Something, anything, better than this horrifying holding pattern Hank remains trapped in. 

“You’ll have to meet Raven,” Charles is just telling him over Ch’in tea and fluffy sticky brioche, when a shadow darkens the table. Hank’s expression turns immediately alarmed.

Charles sighs, Erik’s presence only just now registering on his mental map after a day spent so engrossed in conversation. It is impressive though that Erik managed to find him at all. “Hello, Cassiline.” 

“Settle up, we’re leaving,” he growls, reaching out to grab Charles shoulder in a grip that is only a hairsbreadth away from painful. Hank’s eyes only grow rounder. 

“Hank, I apologize for my erstwhile companion,” Charles says, digging in his pocket for a couple of silvers to leave on the table. “Would you permit us to walk you home?”

Erik’s grip tightens further on his shoulder and Hank squeaks, “I’m sure that will be most unnecessary. I will...er...just send you any new findings I have. Yes. That will do.” 

“Oh, but--” Charles starts, but Hank is already up and out the shop in the blink of an eye. Charles shakes his head, must be an aspect of the feet, he decides. He’s never seen anybody move that fast, not even Raven. 

“If you do not get up right now,” Erik tells him, voice low and dangerously quiet, piercing through Charles’ thoughts like one of his wickedly honed daggers, “I will pick you up and toss you over my shoulder.” 

“There is absolutely no need to be so melodramatic about it,” Charles replies, gathering himself together at an unhurried pace. He yelps when Erik tugs him out of the chair by his collar. Erik drags him nearly ten streets, Charles protesting and struggling the whole while, before he stops and throws Charles back against a tavern wall, knocking the wind quite handily out of his lungs. 

Charles gasps, stunned from the force of it, his head bouncing against the brick. 

Erik moves in close, green eyes snapping with vigor and righteous anger. “If you ever, _ever_ do that to me again, so help me I will kill you myself.” 

Charles stares at him, groggily, and yet as defiant as he can manage. “If you would make yourself more tolerable company, perhaps I wouldn’t need to steal away,” he breathes. 

Erik looks ready to strike him and Charles lifts his chin, preparing himself for the blow, but something about it makes Erik pause, and he turns away, shoulders hunched. He takes several deep breaths, before turning back to Charles and ordering him to move. They don’t speak the rest of the way home, but Charles is very aware of Erik on his periphery, silent and several steps ahead of him. Erik never looks back to check if Charles is behind, seemingly fully attuned to Charles’ presence without even looking, but Charles notes after another long interminable minute of utmost silence between them, that Erik’s hands tremble. It is only the minutest of twitches, but to anybody as practiced as Charles, it is noticeable indeed. He thumbs his throat from where his collar bit into his skin, counting himself lucky indeed if he doesn’t come up covered in garish purple bruising. Abruptly it becomes clear that Erik’s drawn up shoulders and the tension he radiates speak to something other than anger. 

Charles marvels at this. So, the Cassiline was worried.


	7. Frustration, Dissatisfaction, Nonfulfillment - A pattern emerges

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles through no fault of his own earns himself a very unexpected patron.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know. This is the saddest chapter update ever. I'm so sorry! My job got crazy and then I quit it and life was still crazy. I'm going to try to be better about this in the next couple of months. In the mean time, here's a little something I managed to scrape together.

If Erik thinks Charles is the chirpy and cheerful strumpet out of a sheer unmitigated joy for constant debauched sex, which, Charles assumes he does, occasional minor mishaps with patrons notwithstanding, then tonight will surely prove him wrong. (Difficult, of course, to explain to Erik that Charles is glad not to be relegated to a corner like some dusty La Serinissiman Doxy as he spent the first eight years of his altogether too perceptive life thinking he was.) Charles enjoys congress, as any sane D’angeline does, but that doesn’t always mean it lends joy. Sometimes, more often than not, it’s a perfect bore, and some patrons seem intent on waging intense manipulative warfare on him--after all, he is being paid to be a plaything. If they wanted a psychologically healthy tryst, they certainly wouldn’t be commissioning it. He tries not to accept those clients twice, inasmuch control as Fury allows him, but sometimes, and it seems more often than not, it is those egregious offenders who hold the most important secrets to the realm’s seamy and pestilential underbelly. 

And so he must allow himself to be trotted out like a Menekhet slave boy dressed in only a gauzy _subligaculum_ that had made Erik tighten his jaw and look steadfastly at some point above Charles’ shoulder. 

Frankly, that’s how he feels about it himself. 

Alas, his patroness, while endowed in some areas like the lusty Tiberian goddess, Venus, was not overwhelming society or Charles with her vast and over-reaching sense of compassion. It seemed to him she would’ve been better suited with an adept from Mandrake, but after a casual almost accidental skim of her brain in response to a malicious comment made at another courtier’s unwitting expense, it occurs to him that that was exactly the point. He realizes, to his horror, that she would find no pleasure in his humiliation if a part of him enjoyed it like a subservient Mandrake adapt would. And why not then, choose a courtesan who had made a name for himself as an intelligent companion and do her utmost to lay him low. 

It is no small comfort that she's so easily exploited by her very desire to demean him. She’d exiled him from the conversation, enjoyment sticking and rolling on him like rotting fruit at the sight of his tightened jaw. He stands, trying to look properly abject, in the corner of the room, paging through her mind like an archivist, filing secrets away and interrupting Nick Fury who is at some soiree for important old army farts with choice bits like, “I think it is of vital importance that you know that she detests Caerdicci cheese, she might try to steer our great nation in a war with that August Peninsula,” or ten minutes later, “I have just found out that she suspects her cobbler of trysting with her favorite ladies maid, we might expect her to abuse her power as Lord Chancellor’s secretary to issue an edict against Eluine shoemakers.” It is, after all, Fury’s fault for forcing him to weather her company. 

Nick Fury’s mounting annoyance is coupled with an undercurrent of amusement and wonder that Charles can reach him so clearly, leagues across the city, so Charles keeps on pestering him. 

“Aha! You!” 

Charles jolts out of his patron’s mind with a start, to see a wild haired youth, sharply dressed all in black, with a brimming glass of Namarrese wine in each hand. 

“Pardon?” he asks, trying to place the boy without cheating. 

“I decided to make a study of the most bored person in the room, and while I thought it would be difficult, because there are many levels of boredom here at this farce of a party, you are, above and beyond, the worst. If I had a medal, I’d present it to you with all honors.” 

And then Charles knows who he is immediately, that simultaneously jocular and biting tone so reminiscent of only one other man. 

“Anthony Stark,” Charles says, “I am most delighted to make your acquaintance.” 

The Stark boy blinks at him, surprised. “Tony, thank you. Is it fame or infamy that brought my name to your ears?” 

Charles knows better than to dignify that with a response. “Have you finished your studies in Tiberium?” he asks mildly, trying to look as dignified as possible bedecked in heavy jewels and a drafty loincloth. 

“Returned, was sent packing, got tired of the whole thing--take your pick,” he replies with a dissolute wave of his hand. “But you, little bird, have not introduced yourself.” 

Charles stares at the Stark heir with raised brow. Tony is not yet eighteen, if he had to guess, and a glance through his mind confirms it. “Charles of House Fury, if it pleases you.” 

“Well, well, well, it is most definitely through infamy that I know _you_.” 

Charles gives a startled laugh. He would hardly have thought word of his exploits would travel all the way to the universities in Tiberium. If so, for his own safety, he can only hope it is of the one vocation and not the other. “What, pray, have you heard?”

“My word, is that a Cassiline?” Tony says, attention caught somewhere over Charles’ left shoulder where Erik is no doubt hiding, a dark drab shadow. Tony looks back at Charles. “I may have to take your boredom medal away, much though it may displease you.”

Charles steals a glance through Tony’s eyes and confirms that Erik looks like only his extreme puzzling love of his Cassiline greys is keeping him from breaking his oath and leaving the party at a run.

Tony calls out to him, “Mssr. Cassiline, come here, would you please?” 

Erik appears instantly at Charles’ shoulder, expression wiped blank to the point of insolence. He says nothing, not even a greeting, not that this obvious display of rudeness seems to perterb Tony in the slightest. “Brother Lehnsherr, this is Anthony Stark, and as I’m sure you know, the heir to the ruling house in Camlach.” Erik almost starts at the formal reference to his title, which Charles has never before observed. The glare he cuts Charles brings a quickly suppressed smile to his lips. 

Tony stares at them, head tilted. “So, Cassiline, what brings you into such gilded company?”

Erik’s famed incredulous eyebrow raises a hairsbreadth. Just enough to show his contempt. Tony doesn’t seem the least cowed by it. “What, have you sworn a vow of silence? Ye gods, you religious types are dull.”

Erik snorts. “I have not sworn any such vow, mssr., but neither am I required to indulge the whims of capricious profligate lordlings.” 

Charles clears his throat, ducking his eyes to hide his amusement. “And now you’ve met my lovely bodyguard.” 

Tony laughs. “A cassiline? Your infamy grows, little courtesan. Soon I’ll be hearing tales of you riding tigers through the streets and serving your patrons wine in the skulls of those that displease you.” 

“Only if you’re spreading such fantasies, I imagine,” Charles replies distractedly, all too aware of Erik’s stiff form beside him. Across the room, his patroness catches his attention with a pointed glare and a snap of her fingers. “I fear my devoir beckons.” 

“I would not dare to keep you. It was most enlightening to meet you, lovely Charles,” Tony says, taking Charles’ hand a brushing a kiss across the back. “And you too, Brother Sourface.” 

Charles only shakes his head at Tony’s theatrical roguishness and makes his way across the room to pretend at simpering at his patronesses’ feet. 

*  
He’s not exactly surprised when Fury announces over breakfast two weeks later that Tony Stark has inquired after his availibility, although he certainly never lay in wait for it. “I doubt the boy knows anything of use. By all accounts he's far too busy with his own pursuits--although I would give my eye teeth for a look at the plans for Howard Stark’s siege engines.” 

Charles pauses in his breakfast. “Do you think he would have access to such documents?”

“You take me for a fool? Of course not,” Fury replies irascibly. “What I’m trying to get at, is that the choice to take the job is yours.” 

“Oh...well,” Charles stumbles, aware of Erik’s eyes on him.

“What’s he like?” Moira asks absently. A bushy white Akkadian kitten a patron had given her sits in her lap, eating choice morsels of breakfast straight from her fingers. She’d had the option to sell it to add another inch to her mark, but had chosen to keep the little ball of fluff, much to the chagrin of nearly the entire household. Fury, ever resourceful, found a use even in the unwanted kitten. Charles has attempted to communicate with it thrice now, but has so far met with little success. 

Erik answers before Charles can, “He’s an arrogant spoilt clown.” 

Charles laughs. “Just so.” He deliberates over a piece of fruit. “But I like him. Tell him we accept.” 

Fury nods. “If any plans just happen to be lying around...”

“I will do my utmost to relay copies, no eyeteeth necessary,” Charles replies with a smile. Fury winces, knowing how literally Charles’ means. 

When the day arrives, Charles has a difficult time deciding what to wear. Should he choose austere simple clothing in counterpart to Tony’s own outrageous mode of dress, or sumptuous and provocative imported fabrics? He has no idea. Tony’s man sent no particulars along with his signed patron contract, which could mean one of two things, 1) Tony is a sadistic little bastard who wants Charles to guess his entire way through or 2) he has never before contracted the services of a courtesan. Neither supposition gives much in the way of direction and so Charles finds himself standing in front of his armoire, clothes tumbling all over the floor. 

Moira lounges insouciantly in his bed, her kitten lying with her, absolutely no help at all. 

“You’re excited,” she says, rolling over in a great rustle of skirts. 

“What are you talking about?” he asks, distractedly, leafing through doublets and hose, desperately hoping for an outfit to appear assembled before him. 

“You’re putting so much effort into it!” she replies with a laugh. “You haven’t been excited, since...”

Charles turns to look at her when she trails off, certain she’s going to point out his endless sniping with Erik. “It’s okay, you can say it.” 

She cuddles the kitten close and says with a shrug, “Since Coulson died.” 

Charles sighs. It’s at least partially true. He’s mentally simulated sex with three patrons in the last couple of months, and sent his mind wandering outward into the city on two others. “I don’t know Moira, he’s simply...interesting? And he clearly knows of our involvement in Fury’s covert activities. It’s refreshing.” 

“He doesn’t know what you are,” Moira points out. The words aren’t meant to offend--Moira never means to offend--but Charles’ finds himself stung by them anyway.

“I know that. But it is what I am, no help for it.” 

“Charles, I didn’t mean...”

He sighs. “It’s fine, Moira, just...let it be.”

*

Erik escorts him in silence to a shabby part of the outer city frequented by students and artists who have not yet secured rich patrons. To Charles it is not that different from the home he made with Raven in the streets of Night’s Doorstep. 

“How is it that you never seem to get pickpocketed?” Erik asks suddenly, breaking the silence. 

Charles trips over a cobble-stone and Erik has to steady him back on his feet. “Beg pardon?”

“You never guard your purse, and yet street urchins and lightfingers all seem to veer away from you. I have never once had to dispense with one.” Erik trains his piercing green eyes on Charles. “It’s odd.” 

“Maybe they simply see my warm smile and decide I’m far too amiable to steal from,” Charles says, forcing a big grin and then dropping his gaze. Charles is good at lying, he’s been doing it all his life, but for some reason, lying to Erik seems unsavory and uncomfortable. Perhaps because there is no artifice to Erik. At least none that Charles can detect. He has tried desperately not to skim the surface of Erik’s thoughts, although he can never stop himself from getting tangled in his dreams. Last night was particularly troubled, though when Charles tries to grasp at it, the memory slides away in haze of agitation and fear.

Erik clears his throat and points at the address. “The house with the blue door, they told us.” The weather eye he casts over it makes Charles laugh. Erik glances at him. “What? The place looks likely to collapse upon our heads at any moment.”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Charles says, although he feels some trepidations about the soundness of the structure himself. 

“Would you like to continue gawping or come inside?” a clipped voice announces from the porch, startling them both.


End file.
